The present invention relates in general to automatic vote recording and more particularly concerns novel apparatus and techniques for reliably, rapidly and securely accummulating votes manually entered by voters with relatively economical apparatus characterized by extreme flexibility for accommodating a wide variety of ballot forms, numbers of candidates, offices and acceptable votes for each office. The invention is especially useful in connection with an easily programmed electronic computer for recording the votes, first at the precinct level and thereafter at a central location.
Election results accurately reflecting the choices made by the voters is vital to the democratic process in all kinds of elections, whether they be for governmental offices, changes in laws, or in private elections, such as for offices of an organization. Where the number of voters is small, the paper ballot is acceptable provided honest careful officials supervise the dispensation and counting of ballots. The disadvantages of paper ballots in most large elections are readily apparent. Each vote from each ballot must be manually tallied and accummulated. Apart from the time required, the opportunities for even honest errors is evident. Accordingly, many voting authorities now use automatic techniques for accummulating votes.
A typical approach is the mechanical automatic voting machine. There is one bulky machine for each voting booth. Each machine is individually set up for each electron with a sequence of mechanical adjustments. A voter enters the booth and pulls knobs to register his votes. Opening the curtain registers the votes and readies the machine for the next voter. After the polls close, the count from each machine are manually tabulated in each precinct. Moving these bulky machines in and out of the polling places for each electron is disadvantageous. Storing these bulky machines is costly. Still another disadvantage is the relative inflexibility of these machines. Each machine must have enough voting channels to accommodate the largest number of expected offices and candidates even though most will not be used. The result is costly bulky mechanical machines.
Other automatic counting approaches include the use of manually punched business machine cards and paper ballots marked with a special marking device. Business machines then scan the business machine cards or paper ballots to accummulate the vote totals. These techniques are subject to not insubstantial errors.
For a discussion of prior art in electronic voting machines reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 3,793,505. Despite the extensive array of prior art in this field, the electronic voting machine of the prior art has not yet made appreciable entry into the automatic voting machine market.
It is an important object of this invention to provide improved apparatus for voting automatically that overcomes one or more disadvantages of prior art apparatus, such as those enumerated above.
It is a further object of the invention to achieve the preceding object with apparatus that is reliable, relatively free from complexity, capable of economically accommodating a wide variety of ballot formats and is especially suitable for use with a simply programmed digital computer.
It is a further object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects with apparatus that facilitates accommodating write-in votes.
It is a further object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects with apparatus that enables the voter to observe vote selections before they are entered into the accumulated total and make changes, if desired.
If it a further object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects with apparatus that may be constructed in modular form via connection of two voting terminals within one booth, or by insertion of additional memory in the format legalizer apparatus, for facilitating accommodating virtually any election while using only essentially the minimum necessary for a given election.
It is still another object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects with apparatus that may be relatively easily controlled to insure honest voting.
It is still another object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects while maintaining the secrecy of the ballot.
It is still a further object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects while maintaining an accurate count of not only the votes cast by a voter but also the number of selections which the voter could but did not choose (blanks).
It is still another object of the invention to achieve one or more of the preceding objects while presenting signals representative of votes in such a manner that a computer may function simply as an accumulator of the votes for each candidate.
Still another object of the invention is to achieve one or more of the preceding objects while providing simple apparatus to prevent a voter from selecting more than a predetermined authorized number of candidates for a particular office.